Disclaimer: I do not own Carmilla. What's going on so far this season should prove that.

Author's Note: To those of my readers wondering why this isn't the next chapter of 'Let's Pretend', well... Suffice to say, I need a little break from season 2 for a while. (Which I suppose is kind of ironic, given the whole point of that story, but... Well. It's not going anywhere.) Hopefully this particular AU will be entertaining enough that nobody minds TOO much.

What just happened?

Not the actual, literal events, of course. Those were easy enough to recall: Carmilla showing up as she filmed her latest video (that had not been her Snape/Ron fic, dammit!), giving her a gift with a seemingly believably selfish explanation that didn't quite hold up, and... flirting with her.

Flirting.

With her.

To say Laura was confused would be an understatement.

And... the camera was still running. Well, at least she'd be able to prove she hadn't just imagined the whole thing. "Okay," she finally said to it as she struggled to bring her whirling thoughts into some kind of order. "So, if that really was... flirting... then there are two options here." Was it only two, though? Maybe not, but two were all she could handle just then. "One: My immoral, jerkface, possible-kidnapper roommate has a crush on me, and is giving me presents." She honestly wasn't sure how she'd feel, if that proved to be the case. However... "Or Two: My immoral, jerkface, possible-kidnapper roommate is pretending to have a crush and is giving me gifts because I'm next."

She knew exactly how she'd feel if that was the case. And knowing her luck...

She had to get the charm off her. NOW. Without Carmilla in the room to distract her, she was slowly becoming aware of a pulsing wrongness about it, and she couldn't stop herself from flailing about and making disgusted sounds as she all but ripped it off her wrist, lunging out of her chair and shoving it under her mattress. But... No, no that wasn't good enough; the horrid thing would still be too close to her, that way. After a moment's thought, she pulled it out and shoved it under Carmilla's mattress, instead.

That was better. Not great, but better. She slumped down in her chair. What was she supposed to do, now?

An answer - of a sort - came in the form of LaFontaine appearing at the door that Carmilla had never bothered closing. "Hey, we lost her at the Shunned House, again. I swear I knocked on every door in the ladies'; I'm developing a reputation."

Laura could only sigh. Like things hadn't been complicated enough already?

"Geez, frosh, what contaminated your control samples?"

"Oh, you know... I miss my dad. I have papers due. I'm about to become my roommate's next victim." Because Carmilla couldn't have been genuinely flirting She just... she just couldn't have been, was all.

"You really think you're in the crosshairs?" LaFontaine asked, walking into the room and sitting down on Laura's bed.

"I don't know," she replied honestly, heaving a huge sigh. "Even if I am, what am I supposed to do about it?" It wasn't like she hadn't tried getting help, after all. "I showed Perry footage of Carmilla lifting, like, a four hundred pound duffel bag and Perry suggested Carm must 'really be giving it her all at boot camp'."

Wait. Carm? Where had that come from?

Fortunately, LaF didn't notice. "Yeah. Perr likes normal," they said fondly. "She's been that way since we were kids." They paused briefly, then came out with an example. "She used to play monsters, and she'd pretend to be the monsters' mommy. And wouldn't it be nice if we brushed our monster teeth and did our monster homework?" Even Laura, as distracted as she was, couldn't help but chuckle a bit at that. LaF paused again, longer this time, then hesitantly suggested, "We could go over Perry's head."

They could? "To whom?" She wouldn't have been having so much trouble getting to the bottom of things if anyone in authority cared, she didn't think.

"Well, there's at least one other person we know who has a vested interest in reigning Carmilla in."

Oh, she did NOT like where this was headed. "Are you suggesting-"

"That you shower, change into your best cub reporter duds, we crash the Faculty Club, and present your evidence to the Dean?" LaF interrupted.

"The Dean?" Laura repeated slowly. She'd been so sure that LaF wasn't as crazy as some people said they were... "Aren't we supposed to be avoiding her at all costs?"

"Desperate times, desperate measures," LaF said simply. "Come on. Let's get you changed into something with a little less whiff."

Excuse me? "Are you saying that I smell?" Because she was pretty sure that wasn't true.

Mostly.

"I'm saying that I don't want the way you smell to affect my credibility with the Dean." They prodded an unhappy Laura out of her chair and toward the bathroom. "I've got a couple of theories to run by her about the swim team..."

This, Laura decided, wasn't going to end well.

Sometimes, she hated being right.

The Faculty Club crash, along with LaF's bizarre diatribe - the Illuminati? Seriously? - had been bad enough. Then they'd decided to research the clue that Laura had literally grasped at the last moment... which meant a trip to the Library.

She wasn't sure why, but she just knew that it should be capitalized.

It hadn't been too bad, at first. She'd even been able to (mostly) ignore the skittering in the stacks. The Silas Library also had to have the best online system anywhere - it provided a cross reference before they'd even typed anything. (Vaguely, she remembered wanting to investigate said computer system before Betty went missing and everything got all crazy. She made a mental note to come back to that once this whole mess was resolved.) After that, though... Well, things had gotten... odd. The stairs vanished. The monitors warned them to run. The skittering got closer. Books and index cards from the card catalogue took to the air and attacked them. Using her mace and LaF's lighter to set the vortex on fire had made sense at the time, really it had... until they realized that all they'd done was go from being trapped in a vortex of books and cards to being trapped in a flaming vortex.

Still, though, they'd gotten out of there just fine! Danny was totally overacting. (And okay, so maybe that text had been a little desperate. But they'd met her outside the Library, so shouldn't that have helped her calm down?) And more than that, they'd gotten the information they were looking for.

It seemed that every twenty years, five girls would go missing from the University. She wasn't sure exactly how far back this went, but the one other constant was that Carmilla - or whatever anagram'd name she happened to be using at the time - would always be there when they did.

Because, apparently, she was a vampire.

She was pretty sure that piece of information should have been harder to accept than it was.

It was sweet - or possibly very worrying - that Danny leapt straight to looking up means of killing vampires when she heard that Carmilla was making "seduction eyes" at Laura (the dreams and charms evidently didn't matter), but, as she'd made clear, the only thing that would help would be to trap her and make her talk.

She had not expected to be the bait in that particular trap, though.

As much as she didn't like the idea, she could understand the reasoning. Danny... didn't seem inclined to even try. She didn't like anything about the idea. Not even - or perhaps especially not - that Laura had enlisted the Zetas to help trap Carmilla. Laura had to give the guys credit, though; as jerky as some of them might have been, they were willing to potentially risk their lives going up against a possible kidnapper and/or murderer to protect the girls on campus. (And maybe she did really only know Kirsch, but he seemed like a good guy, if a little... less than brilliant.)

Her efforts to psych herself up for being vampire bait kind of backfired, though. Instead of being calm and cool, all it had done was drive home exactly how helpless she'd be if Carmilla decided she wanted a snack in the middle of the night, and her 'soy milk' wouldn't do. She started jumping at every sudden noise, convinced she was being stalked, that Carmilla was just toying with her.

Which is what lead her to be standing on the Summer Society's front porch, ringing the bell and looking around nervously. She probably should have been in bed already - it had been night already during their adventure at the Library, and that was hours ago - and she had classes in the morning, but she couldn't help it. Maybe she was a huge chicken, but she just couldn't do it. She could not spend the night trapped in the same room as a quite-possibly-hungry vampire who had made it clear she had some kind of designs on Laura.

Even if some of those might potentially be fun...

No. No, not going there. Really not going there.

The door finally opened, revealing... Well, someone. Danny was the only Society member she actually knew. The girl standing in front of her was about five-foot-two, Asian, and had purple streaks in her medium-length hair. "Yes?" she asked warily.

Not the friendliest greeting ever, but it was pretty late in the day - Danny hadn't even answered her text - so she supposed she might have woken some people up. Not this girl - she was dressed in faded jeans and a Summer Society T-shirt, which suggested she was just coming back from or about to head out on a campus patrol - but she hadn't really wanted to inconvenience anyone. Laura smiled at her - and really, it was so nice to be able to look someone in the eyes for once, rather than getting a sore neck from looking up all the time - and said, "Um, hi. Is Danny around? Danny Lawrence? I'm-"

"Laura," the girl interrupted. "Yeah, I know. Between the videos, the truce with the Zetas, and Danny mentioning you, I think we all know who you are. My name's Gail."

Danny was talking about her to her Society sisters? No, no, that wasn't the point... even if it did make her feel all warm and fuzzy inside. "Nice to meet you." She couldn't help but dart a quick look around. "So, um-"

Gail shook her head. "Sorry, sorry. Come in." Rather than waiting, she all but dragged Laura inside, closing the door behind her. "Danny's in a... meeting, right now. She should be out shortly."

Laura processed that somewhat odd statement as she looked around. The unassuming-looking front door lead to a surprisingly normal hallway with plush burgundy carpeting (which made her feel like she should have wiped her feet, even though her shoes were clean), cream-colored walls and a matching ceiling, with a trio of evenly spaced luminescent domes providing light. "I don't want to interrupt," she began, beginning to wonder if she'd made a mistake in coming here. "I just, um... I have a little favor to ask."

Gail gestured for Laura to follow her down the hall. "This have something to do with the roommate?"

Laura blinked. "Wha- How...?"

Gail smiled over her shoulder. "I told you, we've seen the videos," she reminded her, sounding vaguely amused.

"Right." She paused a moment, decided What the hell? and blurted out, "Carmilla's a vampire."

Gail halted in mid-step, causing Laura to nearly crash into her. "Ah," she said a few moments later. "That... would explain a few things." She resumed walking, emerging into what might have been a receiving room back when the mansion the Summer Society lived in had first been built. Oh, it still held the appropriate furniture - a total of seven comfortable-looking chairs in varying shades of green arrayed around the large room, each with a wooden end table next to them; a leather couch that reminded her of Carmilla's wardrobe enough that she forced her eyes elsewhere and refused to even think about it; a fireplace (not lit), with a large flat-screen TV about a foot above it - but she'd never heard of the Summer Society throwing any parties that were open to anyone but their sisters. (The subject had come up after she'd started spending time with Danny. As long as it was 'normal' enough, Perry was always happy to share what she knew.)

"Such as?" She stopped next to the fireplace, studying it. The sides were shaped to look like Grecian columns, with the - she momentarily blanked on the term - pediment having a tympanum that contained relief sculptures of... Were those elves?

"Aside from what was in your videos, you mean? Danny requested that anyone with any woodworking skill at all get busy producing stakes, and that we round up all the garlic we could find." Gail sat down on the arm of a nearby chair, watching her. "She usually doesn't pick fights with anyone but the Zetas, so we were a little confused."

"Heh." A smile flickered across her face. "You know, you're taking all this very calmly." More so than she was, to be certain.

"This is Silas, home of the weird. Don't worry, frosh, you get used to it."

Oh, goodie. Something to look forward to. "Still, I don't wanna cause trouble..."

"Probably shouldn't have started uploading those videos, then," Gail said simply, shrugging. There was no judgement or condemnation in her voice. "Besides, one of the reasons the Summer Society was founded in the first place was to protect people."

Laura shot her a look. "Protect people, or just girls?" she asked pointedly.

Gail looked like she was about to object... then she deflated, chagrin flooding her features. "Everyone," she admitted, sounding abashed. "We'd kind of lost sight of that, for a while. So we already owe you for reminding us of that, never mind all the work you're putting into finding our missing sister. Don't worry about asking any favors."

Laura felt a sliver of guilt, as she'd really gone from looking for Betty to trying to solve a mystery that had evidently been going on for at least as long as Silas University had existed, with no stops inbetween. Not that she didn't want to find Elsie - abominable taste in study-buddies notwithstanding - but... On the other hand, if she found Betty, she would also find Elsie, so Gail wasn't exactly wrong. She walked over to the couch, dropping onto it with a sigh. She regretted not being able to pack anything, even a change of clothes, but she'd been so paranoid when she'd left her dorm room that she'd been convinced that Carmilla would know if she took anything. "I don't get this thing you guys have with the Zetas," she said randomly, trying to distract herself from her thoughts. "They can't be all bad."

Gail shook her head. "It started long, long before I ever got here. I'm not sure anyone really remembers how, anymore. Protecting girls from people like them might well be how we lost our way, for all I know."

Laura wanted to protest the broad statement... but couldn't, remembering how even the genuinely goodnatured Kirsch hadn't been able to take a hint and leave that first time, needing Carmilla to smack him around and bite him to drive the point home.

(And honestly, biting? How had she missed that?!)

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, distracting her. She pulled it out and flipped it open, relieved to find an answering text from Danny: Where R U?

Guessing that whatever meeting she'd been in must be over, Laura typed back: Your living room. :)

She heard feet rapidly descending a staircase... which was odd, as she had yet to actually see any stairs. Her unvoiced question was answered when a panel opened up in the wall to her left, revealing Danny, with a sturdy oaken staircase behind her. "You have secret passages?" she asked, tone somewhere between excitement and disbelief.

"Most of the older buildings do," Danny said distractedly as the panel swung closed behind her. "What are you doing here?" She seemed to catch herself. "I mean, it's always good to see you, don't get me wrong..." She'd reached the couch by this point, and was checking Laura for injuries with all the subtlety she possessed... which was to say, none at all.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to intrude," Laura began, feeling painfully awkward. "I just... kind of freaked out, thinking about sleeping while Carmilla was right there, and..." She shrugged, looking at the floor.

Danny let out a breath, sounding... relieved? "Believe me, I'm happy to keep you away from her."

"I'll bet," Gail said dryly, smirking.

Danny shot her a Look. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" she asked pointedly.

"Was just waiting on you," Gail replied evenly, standing up. "You got this?"

Danny's expression softened. "Yeah. And thanks."

"Not a problem." Gail's face suddenly lit up in an impish smile as she walked over and quietly told Danny, "She's cute, Lawrence."

The glare was back. "Gail..."

"Is it serious?" she asked playfully. "Because I would be happy to-"

Whatever she would be happy to do would remain unknown. "Go," Danny growled. Grinning unrepentantly, Gail flounced off down the hall to the front door. Danny shook her head, sighed, and looked back at Laura... who was studying the floor, her cheeks bright red.

Dammit... She resisted the urge to facepalm, instead saying, as calmly as she was able, "You'll have to forgive Gail. She's... Gail."

Laura huffed out a quiet laugh. "No, it's fine. It's just... Well, you know how overprotected and sheltered I was at home." It had come up when Laura was digging into her surprisingly large cache of weapons while they were discussing the 'trapping Carmilla' plan. (Mace and a bat, Danny got. Even the bear spray made some sense, though the quantity seemed a bit much. What her father expected Laura to do with a sword...) That particular piece of information had helped Danny understand why Laura resisted people trying to protect her, rather than help her, and she'd found herself having to curb her natural instincts once or twice. "I'm not quite used to so many people blatantly flirting with me. Let alone... girls. Anyone who might have wanted to never got the chance, back home."

"But you're okay with it?" Danny pressed. "Because I can get them to stop." Or at least stop when she was around.

"No, it's fine." She looked shyly up at Danny, a small smile pulling at her lips. "Not that I'm entirely against them knowing they wouldn't have a chance." She nudged Danny's foot with her own, scooting over to make room for her on the couch.

Danny felt her heartbeat speed up. As far as signals went, that was a fairly blatant one. It was fairly late, though, and they weren't exactly in a private area. Nonetheless, she sat down next to her. What was she supposed to say? 'It's late, and we should get you to bed' would send exactly the wrong message... or the right one. She was pretty sure Laura wasn't ready for that step, though. "I know I haven't exactly been the most supportive of your plan," she began, but Laura cut her off.

"I don't wanna talk about Carmilla right now," she said softly, leaning forward. Danny sent up a silent 'Thank you!' to the Summer Society's patron and founder, and met her halfway. The kiss was soft, and warm, and tender, and everything she'd hoped it would be... and then she felt a jolt that might have been static electricity - but... wasn't, quite - strong enough to make her jerk away, falling backward on the couch.

Laura had a hand clamped over her mouth. "What the Hector Elizondo was that?"

"I don't know," Danny said, frowning as she sat back up. "That's never happened before."

"Well... It should have grounded itself out, right?" Laura offered, before leaning in to kiss her again. They didn't feel the same jolt.

This one was worse.

"Ow!" Laura had both hands clamped over her mouth this time, tears in her eyes. "Stop it!" Who she was talking to, and what they were supposed to stop, neither girl knew.

Danny, who could barely even feel her lips, shook her head. "Okay, time to get you to bed, I think. We can figure things out in the morning."

Laura stood up. "I guess. I, um... didn't bring anything with me."

Danny closed her eyes for a long moment. It seemed like Laura was designed to test her self-control, sometimes. "Don't worry about it. Just... sleep." She stood as well. "Don't even wanna know what might happen if anyone's hands wander during the night," she muttered as she lead Laura toward the hidden staircase.

Laura blushed again. She was confused, aroused, frustrated, scared, and had a stinging pain in her lips that was fading slower than she would have liked, but hopefully a good night's sleep would help her sort all that out. They'd solve this newest mystery, too. Whatever was causing it...

Well, how bad could it be?